Thick smog continues to blanket Beijing for the fifth straight day. The WHO recommends a maximum limit of 25 micrograms per cubic meter.
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Levels of PM2.5 in Beijing, which hit 666 micrograms per cubic meter on Tuesday, weakened to 8 micrograms per cubic meter at 9 a.m. near Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website.
Government departments have given conflicting explanations for the worst smog of 2015 that has engulfed Beijing and much of North China for five days, highlighting what observers say is a lack of coordination and perpetual recriminations in the country’s attempt to tackle pollution. But Zhu Yifang, a deputy director at the Center for Clean Air of University of California, Los Angeles, told finance magazine Caixin that airborne particulate density would be almost equivalent to that of the Great Smog air-pollution event in London in 1952, which caused the premature deaths of about 4,000 people. His citizens have responded with a barrage of Weibo posts noting that, had the conference been held in the Chinese capital, the mission may have been treated more urgently.
This week’s summit in France has brought together about 150 world leaders with a mission to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and stem the devastating risks of global warming.
On Chinese social media, some people have questioned why the government has not issued the highest warning – a red alert – which would restrict the number of cars on the road and shut down schools completely.
But until then, the Ministry of Environmental Protection forecasted severe air pollution for a large region of Beijing, the western part of Shandong province and the northern part of Henan province.
Outside Beijing, readings for PM2.5 were was as high as 976 micrograms in the suburban region of Liulihe.
“We’ve had more than 500 orders for masks in one day, when usually we only get one or two per day”, Mu Ren, an agent for the Singaporean mask brand Totobobo in China, said.
Solar installations have gone from about 300 megawatts in 2009 at the time of the last major climate talks in Copenhagen to nearly 33 gigawatts at the end of 2014.
But some critics directly blamed China for the world’s pollution problem. But the acute spike in pollution in parts of China casts a shadow over his actual commitment.
“There are still doubts about its fossil fuel phase-out scenario”, GlobalData, a London-based research company, said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Xi repeated China’s pledge that emissions would peak by “around 2030” but said poor nations should not have to sacrifice economic growth.
